Past Caring (57 page)

“I made Elizabeth happy again and she made me happy. I’m
not saying I was better for her than you. But she possesses a gift for
improving a man that probably had more to work on in me. It’s just
another irony. We have a son and grandchildren by him. We have a
home in the country. We’re old and harmless. We’re not really much
of a target anymore.

“So I’m not going to beg for mercy. You have the means to destroy me and I probably deserve it. But let’s not pretend you’re doing this to save the regiment’s honour or Caroline van der Merwe’s
soul. Let’s not make the mistake of thinking that anybody’s life is a
clean sheet. If you do this, then you’ll prove my point. You’ll be no
better than me.”

I seemed still to hear Couch’s voice around us in the night after he
had ceased to speak, a whispered echo rustling back to me from the
soft, sighing darkness. Its murmur was of mockery, of scornful,
grinning, flaunted imperfection. He had been honest. He had volunteered the devious twists and turns of his fraudulent life. Perhaps
for the very first time, he had told the truth. But the truth, as he
would have been quick to point out, was outrageously unlikely compared with the credible charade of a life which he had painstakingly

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constructed. The truth, he had implied, was for our ears only. We
were old enough to bear it.

Age did not prevent me feeling surprised, surprised not at the
multi-layered depth of his deception but at the apparent calmness of
my response to it. Where once I would have shaken him by the
throat and demanded restitution , now I merely accepted his offer of
a drink from the hip flask and shivered a little at a cold draught
from the window.

“Can you find nothing to say, Edwin?”

“What would you have me say?”

“You could voice the disgust you must feel, or say you still don’t
believe me.”

“Oh, but I do believe you. Not even you could manufacture such
an account. It’s the only version that really does fit the events, so
much so that I could believe I knew it all along. Every fact—every
feature—confirms it.”

“Is that why you asked the date of my meeting with Lloyd
George and Christabel Pankhurst?”

“In a sense. That was largely to check my own memory. The
day before you met them, Lloyd George had tried to enlist me in his
coalition conspiracy, but I had refused, so making me dangerous to
him as an openly declared opponent who knew of the plot. It may be
that Miss Pankhurst had already approached him about your
claims and that he wished to discover whether he should use those
claims to remove me from his path or to bind me to him. Once I had
shown my colours, he did not hesitate to choose the former course.

They must have planned the sequence of events carefully, waiting
until the moment I resigned before confronting Elizabeth with your
evidence and simultaneously condemning me to Asquith.”

“You’re taking this very calmly.”

“Not calmly—slowly. Let’s take stock. You warned me not to
cite false motives, so I shan’t. Honour and truth are, in your contention , relative terms, though I can’t think of anything less honourable and truthful than what you’ve now admitted. But let’s leave
aside—for the moment—the forgery of my signature, your impersonation of me, the desertion of your wife. Let’s even forget the casual sabotage of my political career. Let’s talk instead about the
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overriding issue between us: Elizabeth. What do you expect me to
do about your theft of her from me?”

“Remember, Edwin , I hadn’t met Elizabeth when I sold the
certificate. I wasn’t selling it to win her. She came later. A happy accident, you could say. Of course, I knew what you would make of it,
but that at least I didn’t plan.”

“Yet you planned to marry her—bigamously. Do you realize
what that makes you—and her—and your son?”

“Technically, it makes me a criminal, Elizabeth my mistress
and Henry . . . a bastard. But it’s not going to come to that, is it?”

“Why shouldn’t it?”

“Because of Elizabeth. If you still love her—as I do—you
couldn’t do such a thing to her. And if you don’t, what would be the
point?”

“Revenge?”

“It rings hollow at our time of life, Edwin. As would money, if
I thought I could buy your silence. No, let’s not dress it up. If you
did it, revenge wouldn’t be the word. It’s too old a crime for that.

Call it by its real name: malice, pure and simple—hardly a gentlemanly virtue.”

He had won , for the moment. The gambler had played his
trump. He had summoned together his failing reserves of daring for
one last vital bluff. If I loved Elizabeth, I would leave old scores unsettled for her sake. If I did not, what grievance had I that could justify the destruction of his family? For who would suffer most? Not
Couch. No, not he, but the innocent accessories to his crime. Mockery
still hung in the night, staring at me intently from the dark void between the glow-worm trails of the city’s lights. It defied me, after all
the years, to sully my unjust fate with an unworthy vengeance.

“I’ll think about what you’ve said,” I announced at last. “Then
I’ll decide what to do.”

Couch looked anxious. “Think about it? What’s there to think
about? If you’re going to come back to punish me, you might at least
get it over with.” It seemed that he, like me, lacked stamina.

“No. I owe you nothing. You left me to ponder the tragedy of
my life for forty years. I’m not letting you off the hook now. I’ll
think—and you can wonder.”

“How long?”

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“I don’t know. As long as I need.”

“And then?”

“Then I might let Elizabeth and your family know the truth—

or I might not.” I was making him suffer for the cunning of his bluff.

I already knew whether I could confront Elizabeth with the truth
about her supposed husband, but I had no intention of letting him
know. So I turned his uncertainty against him and, by climbing
from the car, served notice that he could look for no swift or easy absolution from his sins. For sins they were, too many and too manifest for me to appraise there and then. He might have guessed, on
the strength of his own assessment of me, what my decision would
be. But I saw no reason to spare his nerves the doubt.

“Can I drive you somewhere?” he said through the window.

“No. I’ll walk. I need some fresh air.” We stared pointedly at
each other, then he closed the window and drove off quickly, the
Bentley purring away into the night.

I walked slowly along the road, away from the direction Couch
had taken , down towards the heart of the city, my mind full of distant memories, struggling to sharpen and sift them into clear and
ordered shape. I had so long and so often rehearsed them that my
inadequacy at such a moment seemed pitiful.

Not that I had long in which to mourn the pity of it. A car approached slowly from behind until its headlamps threw a stretched
shadow of me across the trees flanking the road, then slowed still
further to keep pace with me. It was not the Bentley, to judge by the
note of the engine, but, when I turned to identify it, I was only dazzled by the lamps. I went on again and it followed as before.

After another thirty yards, I stopped again , as did the car. I
turned and, this time, shouted above the noise of the engine: “Who’s
there?”

Suddenly, the engine died, followed by the lights. In the moments that it took my eyes to adjust to the darkness, a figure climbed
from the driving seat of the car and walked round to the front of the
bonnet, where I stood. He was a burly man in an overcoat, with a
whiff of cigar smoke about him, and he soon confirmed what I had
already guessed.

“I’m Henry Couchman.” His voice was low and not without
menace. “Who the hell are you?”

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“What business is it of yours?”

“It’s my business when a stranger bursts into my house at night
and upsets my father.”

“I did not burst. Your father invited me in. We’re old friends.

And I repeat: what business is it of yours what passed between us?”

“And I repeat: who the hell are you?”

“Edwin Strafford. Does the name mean anything to you?”

“No more than any vagrant’s. Why should it?”

I was beginning to bridle at his tone. “Because I believe, Mr.

Couchman , that you have political ambitions.”

I could almost see him puff out his chest. “I’m likely to be
elected to Parliament before long. But . . .”

“Then you should study a little political history. I once sat in
Cabinet with your party leader.”

Now it was he who bridled. “Listen to me, Strafford. You forced
my father to give you some kind of interview tonight. First at my
house, then up here—in secret. He was obviously distressed by your
visit and, since he’s not a young man , I was concerned enough to follow you. Now suppose you tell me what you compelled him to discuss for the past hour.”

I had taken my measure of Henry earlier in the day. Though I
had no complaint against him, I instinctively liked him less than his
father. “It was a private matter.”

“You said you were an old friend of my father—yet I’ve never
seen you before.”

“Your father has.”

“My father, Mr. Strafford, has many callers upon his time and
his wealth. It is my duty, as his son , to sift out the undeserving and
the mischievous. You, I suspect, are one of them. So what I’m telling
you is: leave him alone.”

At this, I lost patience with him. “Let me tell you something,
Mr. Couchman. Knowing your father as I do and, having met you, I
think I know the nature of your concern. I’m sure you’ve often had
occasion to cover his tracks.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“What I mean is that your father’s morals could dirty your
whiter-than-white image if you weren’t careful. What you really
want to know is whether my business with your father has any em-

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barrassing implications for your political aspirations. The answer
is yes.”

He shot out an arm and grasped my collar. He had the build
and demeanour of a bully, a fleshy arrogance that bespoke an over-indulged acquisitiveness. “You’re just a nothing, Strafford. If you’re
thinking of trying to blackmail my father—or me—then you’ve
got another think coming. I could . . .”

What he could not do was accost me with impunity. I wrenched
his arm down from my collar and stepped back a pace. “Mr.

Couchman , this nothing may come to loom large in your thoughts.

If I have threatened your father, it’s not with blackmail, but with the
truth. The truth about his conduct in South Africa, the truth about
the way he brought to an end my engagement to your mother.”

“What . . . what are you talking about?”

“I suggest you ask your father.” Fearing that I might already
have said too much, I turned on my heel and walked smartly away
down the road. But he was not to be disposed of so quickly.

“Strafford,” he shouted after me. “Who are you? Where do you
come from?”

I looked back at him. “I was your father’s friend, Mr. Couchman.

I was your mother’s fiancé. I’m from a past many people want to
forget. Tell your father this: that your conduct has made his position much less secure. Tell him that you inspire in me thoughts of
malice.”

Leaving Couchman for the moment speechless, I strode away.

A few minutes later, I heard his car turning round and roaring off
in the direction his father had taken. I did not look back.